At 74 years old, Lydia Suárez has just cut a five-lane avenue with a crowd of neighbors. The cars have had to brake suddenly to avoid taking them ahead. “Call the mayor!” shouts the driver of a van angrily. It’s rush hour in Mexico City. “I am not afraid. I am capable of throwing myself on the floor for my town”, she says dressed in a pink sweater and loafers with ironwork. She doesn’t remember her cell phone number very well, but there is a motto that is widely known: “Xoco is not for sale, it organizes and defends itself!”
It is hard to imagine a town in the middle of a megalopolis. And yet, there it is, just around the corner, Suárez insists: “Xoco is a town, me town”. As she advances towards Río Churubusco avenue between police and protesters, the neighbor begins to remember. At the intersection, where the supermarket, passed the stream that gives its name to the avenue. More than half a century ago, before the city swallowed everything up, she would run out of school to make paper boats out of notebook paper. The current slowly carried them away. Who does not fight for memories like this, comes to say Suárez. He lifts his head toward a 60-story skyscraper he calls The Monster and states, “Now they’re boxing us in.”
Oblivious to the hubbub, the protagonist of the demonstration stands impassive. At this time of afternoon, his windows reflect a yellow winter light. Mítikah is the largest real estate project in Mexico City and a hymn to exclusivity: a beach club with hammocks on the roof, a children’s play area, business lounge. The complex also includes a shopping center and office buildings. The tower, the tallest in the capital, bears the signature of César Pelli, author of marvels such as the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, and is nearing completion. Fibra Uno, its owner, has planned an investment of 20,000 million pesos, about 900 million dollars.
At your feet, Xoco. There are 0.6 square kilometers where people still breathe: narrow streets, low adobe houses with tin roofs, the gentlemen who sit in a corner to chat in the afternoon, greetings from people who pass by… Some are fifth or sixth generation neighbors whose ancestors came to this corner of the Valley of Mexico to work in the flower and vegetable gardens irrigated by the nearby Churubusco River.
Lately, there are also “For sale” signs dept. new”. In a decade, eight towers with more than 15 levels have been built. The predial is 10 times higher than twenty years ago and Mítikah has given the finishing touch. Neighbors fear the complex will make life even more expensive. Xoco found out about the project through some brochures announcing a “housing unit” and was not consulted by the authorities before Mítikah started in 2008. The spark lit in 2019 when the construction company felled 80 trees. It was one of the first times neighbors stopped traffic.
The last cut comes due to the closure of Real de Mayorazgo, the main access road to Xoco. Mítikah is building a “wooded space” that joins two properties of his complex on each side of the street. He will donate it to the capital, but the Xoco People’s Assembly does not trust it and fears that it will end up being privatized. In November, he presented an injunction to stop the works, arguing that they should have carried out the prior consultation that applies to indigenous peoples. The trial continues.
One day after the protest, Álvaro Rosales approaches the wall and makes a visor with his hand. “They already removed the tree that had been saved,” he says, pointing to where a yellow bulldozer is maneuvering. The 62-year-old president of the Assembly follows the progress to the millimeter. In the last half year, he and other neighbors have knocked down the ramparts three times with a hammer.
“Mítikah wants to unite the two properties so that their apartments are more expensive. We want them to leave the street as it was. We have talked about it with the government but they have told us that the place is not negotiable”, affirms Rosales. “Boss, are you going to close the street again?” Interrupts a driver of a bus parked a few steps away. “No, no, don’t worry,” he assures her. Everyone here knows him.
Faced with doubts from residents, the Director of Evaluation of the Environment Secretariat, Lilian Guigue, assures that the space will be “completely public” and highlights the works that Mítikah has promised to pay for the impact of the project. The controversial square is one, but there is also the rehabilitation of the church, the reconstruction of the health center and the widening of streets. 475 million pesos in planned investment. “The never seen”, values Guigue, although she regrets the lack of consultation when authorizing the project: “The developers should be considering how to include the neighbors and not how to expel them.” Mítikah has not responded to this newspaper’s request for an interview.
Following Real de Mayorazgo, one enters the heart of Xoco and divisions begin to emerge. The church of San Sebastián el Mártir, from the 17th century, has a recently restored brick and stone façade and the atrium has new tiles. It looks rickety in front of the Mitikah shopping center; a colonial miniature about to be swallowed by the wave of cement and glass. The mayordomo, responsible for attending the church and organizing the parties, approaches to open the gate with a purple cloth in his hand. Manuel Hernández, 44, was taping Xoco’s bearded patron to a wooden pedestal.
-“They are giving us some niches,” Hernández announces when greeting, pointing to the group of workers who are digging some holes.
-“Aren’t you going to pay anything?” Rosales asks, surprised.
-“Nothing, gifts. Just the lid. Mitikah namas I wanted to make the atrium but I put the niches as a condition”.
His grandfather, he remembers, was buried “in the middle” of Río Churubusco avenue when it was opened above the town cemetery. He doesn’t want it to happen again. Hernández calculates that 600 residents may be buried there. He wants to reserve them for the “originarios”, the handful of families that have lived in Xoco since the beginning of the 20th century, and establish a clause to prevent them from being sold to others. “Nine years ago we were 3,500 inhabitants. With City Towers [otro conjunto de rascacielos] We are already 14,000″, adds Rosales. Although not yet inaugurated, Mitikah contemplates 12,789 parking spaces.
In his day, Hernández opposed the project and made a ruckus when, due to the works, a scar was opened in the wall behind San Sebastián. He now feels that there is no way to stop him and wants to take advantage of the circumstances. The butler enters through the sacristy, points to the beamed ceiling and says: “There they fixed some dampness. Whatever I have asked of them, Mitikah has given it to me.” The company has paid for the connection to the electricity grid and repaired the interior. “No one agrees with the tower. Nothing is going to compensate you 100%, but the damage has already been done. That they pay and that a little pinch stays in Xoco”, he affirms. “That’s my saying.”
In the adobe house of Lydia Suárez
While Hernández finishes the last preparations before the mass, Lydia Suárez gets ready for the Assembly meeting, where the previous day’s protest will be discussed. She lives in a small adobe house that her husband’s father bought for six cows and 20,000 pesos in cash when Xoco was still surrounded by fields of beans and corn. The adobe bricks are marked behind the white paint with brown lines from moisture. Every four months they have to repaint. She is cold in the house. “Around 2:00 p.m. El Monstruo blocks the sun,” says Suárez.
From the living room window, when you lift the embroidered curtain, you can see the glass tower where the penthouse with a pool costs around 27 million pesos. The revaluation of the Xoco land has raised property taxes. Suárez’s husband takes out of a wooden cabinet the receipt that they have just paid with the other three brothers who share the land: 35,584 pesos. In the nineties they paid 3,500 and it stayed that way for many years. Starting in 2000, when the boom of construction, increased to 7,000, then to 9,000 and so on until today. “Imagine how it will rise when Mítikah works,” says Suárez. She and her husband receive 7,400 monthly pension between the two of them.
It is not the only concern. Suárez has an orange jug next to the kitchen sink in case the water suddenly runs out. He turns on the faucet and a trickle begins to fall. “Look how little,” he says. “We never suffered from water until City Towers arrived. Now it happens two or three times a week.” As part of the agreement with the government, Mítikah has built a 400-meter-deep well to supply the area, but fear is already present.
There are lessons to be learned from the Xoco case, acknowledges Lilian Guigue. “Developers are required to carry out mitigation works as soon as they are authorized, but they leave it at the end. We should reverse the roles, let them pay for the measures first and then start the project”, she points out. “I know why the neighbors are angry. They have been supporting a construction next to their houses for 15 years. Of course they no longer believe them, they have been sold lies.”
Suárez arrives at the meeting of the Assembly when it begins to get dark. The bulk of a tower hovers over the conclave of twenty well-dressed people from Xoquenses. It is in a playground donated by a developer who, in turn, bought it from the Jiménez family for 12 million pesos five years ago. Jorge Jiménez, who has a house next to his grandparents’ property, recently received an offer from Tecnocasa for 18 million, six more than what the construction company offered at the time. Prices are going up fast, but he hasn’t sold. “We sell and where do we go? We are rooted and besides notarizing costs a lanote”, he points out.
The agenda of the meeting includes the protest of the previous day and the news of the amparo. Very quickly, however, memories arise. From when the neighbors hung the cages of their canaries on the wall of the Church so that they would sing to Saint Sebastian during the vigil. Or when a pig escaped during the slaughter season and its screams filled the muddy streets of Xoco. Sitting in a circle, everyone laughs, young and old, and it seems like a town again.
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